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Amid deep red curtains at a well-known Oslo location for LGBTQ+ gatherings, the Norwegian Lutheran Church offered an apology for harm and unequal treatment caused by the church.

“The national church has caused LGBTQ+ people shame, great harm and pain,” the presiding bishop, Bishop Tveit, stated this Thursday. “This should never have happened and this is why today I say sorry.”

“Harassment, discrimination and unfair treatment” had caused some to lose their faith, Tveit acknowledged. A religious service at the cathedral in Oslo was scheduled to follow his apology.

This formal apology was delivered at a venue called London Pub, one of two bars involved in the 2022 attack that took two lives and left nine seriously injured throughout the Oslo Pride festivities. A Norwegian of Iranian origin, who swore loyalty to Islamic State, was sentenced to a minimum of three decades in prison for the killings.

Similar to numerous global faiths, the Norwegian Lutheran Church – a Lutheran evangelical community that is the most extensive faith community in the country – had long marginalised LGBTQ+ people, denying them the opportunity from serving as pastors or to have church weddings. Back in the 1950s, church leaders referred to homosexual individuals as a “social danger of global proportions”.

However, as Norway's society grew more liberal, emerging as the world's second to legalize same-sex partnerships during 1993 and in 2009 the initial Nordic nation to legalize same-sex marriage, the church gradually changed.

Back in 2007, the Norwegian Lutheran Church started appointing homosexual ministers, and same-sex couples could marry in church from 2017 onward. During 2023, Tveit joined in Oslo’s Pride parade in what was called a historic moment for the religious institution.

Thursday’s apology elicited a mixed reaction. The leader of an organization for Christian lesbians in Norway, Hanne Marie Pedersen-Eriksen, who is also a gay pastor, referred to it as “a crucial act of amends” and a point in time that “finally marked the end of a difficult period in the history of the church”.

For Stephen Adom, the head of Norway’s Association for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the apology was “strong and important” but was delivered “not in time for those who lost their lives to AIDS … carrying heavy hearts as the church regarded the crisis as punishment from God”.

Worldwide, several faith-based organizations have tried to offer apologies for historical treatment towards LGBTQ+ people. In 2023, England's church expressed regret for what it characterized as “shameful” actions, even as it continues to refuse to permit gay marriages within the church.

In a similar vein, the Methodist Church in Ireland last year issued an apology for “shortcomings in pastoral care and support” toward LGBTQ+ individuals and their relatives, but stayed firm in its conviction that matrimony must only constitute a union between a man and a woman.

In the early part of this year, Canada's United Church issued an apology toward Two-Spirit and LGBTQIA+ individuals, describing it as a confirmation of its “pledge to complete acceptance and open hospitality” in every part of the church's activities.

“We have failed to celebrate and delight in the wonderful diversity of creation,” Michael Blair, the top administrative leader of the church, remarked. “We have wounded people in place of fostering completeness. We are sorry.”